Hermitage Gallery

02/21/2026

Lyonel Feininger (German-American, 1871-1956)
Fin de séance, 1910, oil on canvas. 95x86 cm

02/18/2026

02/17/2026

In his Self-Portrait of 1930, Pierre Bonnard presents the self not as a stable identity but as a fragile apparition suspended in colour and light. The figure is withdrawn, almost receding into the surrounding field, its contours softened to the point where body and space begin to merge. Bonnard does not confront the viewer; instead, he turns inward, offering a vision of the self as something provisional and quietly elusive.

The palette is restrained yet luminous. Warm ochres, pale yellows, and muted blues dominate, creating an atmosphere that feels both intimate and unstable. The face, barely modelled, seems to flicker between presence and erasure. Features are suggested rather than defined, as if memory rather than direct observation were guiding the hand. This deliberate vagueness resists the traditional authority of the self-portrait as declaration or assertion.

Spatially, the painting is ambiguous. The background does not function as a coherent interior but as a shallow, vibrating plane of colour. Vertical bands and soft rectangular forms hint at walls or doorframes, yet they never solidify. The body is held within this uncertain architecture, caught between enclosure and dissolution. Bonnard’s line, delicate and searching, traces the figure without anchoring it.

What emerges is a portrait shaped by time rather than likeness. Painted late in Bonnard’s life, the work reflects an acute awareness of aging, not through explicit signs, but through a sense of fading coherence. The self is no longer fixed; it is something glimpsed, momentarily assembled from sensation, habit, and light.

This self-portrait exemplifies Bonnard’s modernity. He rejects psychological drama and instead pursues perceptual truth—how the self feels when seen indirectly, obliquely, almost accidentally. The painting becomes less an image of a man than a record of looking, remembering, and quietly disappearing into colour.

02/17/2026

Max Ernst at Peggy Guggenheim’s Apartment, in 1940, captured by Hermann Landshoff.

Set in the New York apartment of legendary collector Peggy Guggenheim, the image reflects the intimate yet complex bond between the surrealist artist and his patron. Their story began in 1938 when Peggy started collecting Ernst’s works, and by 1942, their relationship evolved into marriage — a passionate, if short-lived, union that lasted until 1946.

Ernst looks completely at ease, leaning against a Gwasila, Kwakiutl house pole, an extraordinary piece now housed in the Musée du Quai Branly, Paris. Behind him, the delicate silhouette of Alberto Giacometti’s Woman Walking emerges, a sculpture now part of the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice.

02/17/2026

Félix Vallotton (Swiss and French, 1865-1925)
Coucher de soleil, nuages bleus. 1918.
Oil on canvas.
46 × 54 cm.

02/10/2026

Pietà or Revolution by Night - Max Ernst - 1923

Here Ernst replaces the popular Renaissance scene of Madonna cradling the body of Christ (known as Pietà) with an image of the artist himself, held by his father. Ernst paints his father following the traditional iconography of the Madonna, Mother of Christ. He subverts the original scene, showing instead a father figure in a caring role traditionally associated with women and mothers.

Tate Modern, London
Oil on canvas
116.2 × 88.9 cm (45 3⁄4 in × 35 in.)

09/23/2025

Edvard Munch, The Day After, 1895